1. Field of Art
The disclosure generally relates to the field of mobile browsers, and more specifically to mobile browser content download management.
2. Description of Art
Mobile computing devices, for example, smartphones and functionality enhanced mobile phones, are well known. Such computing devices include screens that display network and application user interfaces, for example, web browsers or applets. These devices may need to download a large volume of timely and relevant information to be rendered in these web browsers or applets for user consumption.
One problem with mobile computing devices is that they frequently have limited network availability. Network availability may be limited in the sense that a network connection may be intermittent, or the available bandwidth or speed of the network may be low. Hence, devices may be unable to download and render requested information for the user in a timely manner. Yet another problem is that depending on the type and strength of network availability, power consumption in order to accomplish a download task will vary.
One attempt to address the shortcomings of the art has been to implement new network technologies that provide a faster connection with which to transfer the needed data. However, it may not always be feasible to upgrade network infrastructure to improve downloading speed everywhere the device may be used. Further, upgraded network infrastructure for mobile computing devices frequently lags behind the rate at which mobile device software services are able use up that network availability.
Other approaches involve improving mobile device hardware or optimizing browser software in order to render the downloaded page at the fastest possible speed, however neither of these approaches addresses underlying network bottleneck issues that are the main source of the problem. Another approach has been to render an outdated version of a webpage in cache and to present it to the user while the latest page is being downloaded, however since the page is out of date, the user may be presented with inaccurate information.